They searched for almost the entire night.
The forest around Kaer Morhen was not small. There wasn't much to say. They were tired, they were hurt, and the compass was pointing somewhere ahead of them.
It took until the sky started going grey before they found it.
The portal sat between two old oaks, barely visible, just a faint distortion in the air that the compass confirmed with a hard swing of its needle. When it opened, Finn didn't hesitate. He stepped through and Ciri followed.
The world on the other side stopped them both for a moment.
The forest here was made of glass. The trees had trunks of pale translucent material that caught what little light there was and scattered it in every direction. The ground beneath their feet was not dirt but gemstone, deep greens and blues and purples packed together like cobblestones, each one smooth underfoot. It was completely silent. No animals, no wind, nothing. It was only the two of them now.
Finn breathed out slowly.
"Here," he said. "We stop here."
Ciri didn't argue.
He got a fire going using the dry wood from his bag, the only normal thing in a very abnormal forest, and they sat down on the gemstone ground and finally, for the first time in what felt like days, stopped moving.
Finn went through his bag. Three vials left of the expensive ones, the potions from Faerun that actually worked properly. He uncorked one and split it between himself and Ciri, enough to take the edge off the shoulder and close the cut on her arm properly. His shoulder settled from screaming to a dull persistent ache. Ciri flexed her arm and said nothing, which meant it was better.
He called out Chip and Kelpie next.
Chip appeared and sat down weakly. The wound on his side had crusted over but the skin around it was wrong. Kelpie favoured her hind leg the moment she appeared, her mane burning very low.
Finn reached into his bag for the potions he'd bought in the Pokemon world. Oran berry extract, super potions, the full kit. He applied them carefully and watched them do almost nothing of significance instantly. Chip sniffed at the super potion and made a sound of profound disappointment.
Finn looked at his remaining two vials.
He looked at Chip's side. He looked at Kelpie's leg.
He uncorked the second vial and split it between them, pouring it directly onto the wounds. Chip made a noise that was somewhere between a yelp and a growl. Kelpie stomped her good leg once. But within a minute the crusting on Chip's side softened and the skin beneath it began to close, and Kelpie put weight on her bad leg with only a slight hesitation.
One vial left.
Finn put it away and leaned back against a glass trunk. The cold of the gemstone ground came through his clothes but he didn't have the energy to care.
Chip climbed onto his lap and bit his finger.
"Ow," Finn said.
"Gii," Chip said, and settled down.
They sat like that for a while, the fire crackling, the glass trees throwing the light around in patterns on the gemstone floor. Kelpie had her head in Ciri's lap and her eyes mostly closed. The whole world was quiet.
Then Ciri said, "I feel as if we made a mistake. We just left him there."
Finn didn't need to ask who she meant. It was of course Geralt. "He was fine in the story. You left him there. He dragged himself to the castle."
"And how much of that story still holds? After everything we've changed?"
Finn had no answer for that. "What do you want to do?"
"I don't know. Bring him along, perhaps." A pause. "There must be something we could do."
"He has amnesia, Ciri. You saw him. The Wild Hunt did something to his memory." Finn shifted Chip slightly on his lap. "How would you cure that in our current situation?"
She didn't answer immediately.
"...Yennefer," she said finally. "Leave him with her."
"Do you know where she is?"
Silence was her only answer to that.
"I could locate her," Ciri said. "Using my powers."
"And draw The Wild Hunt straight to her?" Finn stated. "Didn't Geralt offer himself to The Wild Hunt because they tried to use her to bait you? And now you want to essentially point them right at her?"
"Enough." Ciri put her hand up. "You've spoken your point."
The fire popped once. Chip adjusted on Finn's lap and went back to sleep.
"So we continue then," Ciri said. "As before."
Finn had been turning something over in his head for a while, and this felt like the right moment. "There's something bothering me," he said. "Aren't you supposed to be with someone around this time? Or at least in the near future?"
"How would I know, Finn. You're the one who knows of my future."
"Someone named…" He tried to remember. "Avalak, or something like that."
"...Avallach."
"You know him?"
"I've met him before. An Aen Seidhe. A sage." She pulled her jacket tighter. "Meeting you may have changed that future. I might not meet him again."
"I wouldn't think like that," Finn said. "If he's an Aen Seidhe, he can track you just as well as The Wild Hunt can, if not better. He'll find you eventually, with or without either of us doing anything about it." He paused. "Then again, depending on when that happens, it changes a lot of what comes after for you."
Ciri said nothing to that.
The quiet settled back around them. The glass trees caught the firelight and threw it everywhere in small scattered pieces. Chip breathed slowly on Finn's lap. Kelpie's mane had settled to a steady low flame, calm now.
"Sorry," Ciri said.
Finn turned his head to Ciri, confused.
"I dragged you into this," she said. "You did not ask for it."
Finn scoffed. "If anything it's my fault. I just went along with it."
"I was the one who stumbled onto you. Accidentally." She didn't finish the thought. She didn't need to.
Finn shook his head, the corner of his mouth pulling up slightly. "Don't worry about it."
Neither of them said anything after that. The fire burned down slowly and the gemstone floor glittered beneath it and outside the circle of their camp the glass forest stood silent in every direction, throwing back the light in pieces.